HN Explorer

Ask HN: Dot EU domain instead of dot com?

9 points by skwee357 ↗ HN
I'm working on a service that targets mainly EU companies/businesses. I have either the option to get servicename.eu or euservicename.com

I know the .com is king, and I always prefer to get .com for non-personal projects. However, I don't have much experience targeting primarily EU markets, so I'm not sure how common it is for EU businesses to be familiar with .eu domains.

Can anyone share their experience with .eu domains? Is it as popular as .com for EU or just a niche TLD created for the sake of consistency?

14 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 41.2 ms ] thread
throwaway529
.eu's not huge in europe. But it's not .biz either.

Some customers might not notice, for some it'll suggest you're heavily EU focused - be aware .fr, .de, etc are definately a thing, and some might mistake you for a government agency offshoot.

But I don't see it heavily associated with .lol, .info, .biz, etc.

The other side of the coin is that non-.eu customers may associate your products or services with only the EU, or perhaps feel excluded.

skwee357
Thanks. From my research, .eu seems to used by official EU entities like ECB and other government/EU block/EU fans websites.

My biggest concern is being penalized by Google, or being seen as an abusive domain like .lol/.xyz

lobsterthief
You won’t be penalized by Google based purely on it being a region- or country-level TLD. However, if you are trying to attract users outside of the EU, they may be less likely to click when they see the .eu TLD. Clickthrough rate on the SERP is a major signal to Google on how to rank a result for a given query.
moooo99
> Some customers might not notice, for some it'll suggest you're heavily EU focused - be aware .fr, .de, etc are definately a thing, and some might mistake you for a government agency offshoot.

I am not sure about .fr, but I can tell you for sure that you won’t be mistaken as a government offshoot for using a .de domain, they are extremely common in Germany and are basically standard for any Germany business.

That being said, I guess many people could misunderstand the tld for your business being limited to Germany instead of Europe/EU in general

mytailorisrich
Better to have the exact "servicename" name, so would go for the .eu but buy both. That said, surely there are more options than only .eu and .com?
skwee357
Unfortunately, servicename.com is not available. .com's are hard to get.

Options other than .eu and .com are not reliable. .org/.net/.biz are kinda niche and have their own associations (non profit/internet provider/business). All the new TLDs are sort of stupid, and in my (very little) experience, are not indexed well by Google. Countries TLDs like .de, .fr, etc - are very country specific and does not target EU as a whole

iorrus
As someone based in the EU but an English speaker I like to buy from .eu domains, the language will probably be in English and the shipping pan Europe while still priced in Euro with no import duties.

I trust .de domains too for the same reasons as that's a kind of default pan European domain mainly based on amazon.de and caseking.de.

mytailorisrich
.de is purely Germany, like .fr is France, amazon.fr. Certainly not a "default pan European domain".
phillipseamore
Go with EU or a ccTLD(s) in Europe. If you are under a ccTLD where the registrar is rather strict on who can be assigned domains you might even score higher in search engines (or at least not get penalized).

COM is fully under US jurisdiction (though really most of the DNS system is).

M2Ys4U
Bare in mind that in order to regiser a .eu domain you must be an EU citizen, resident in the EU or your organisation must be established in the EU. (or the EEA - Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway)

And yes, they will take away domains if you don't continue to meet the requirements - it happened to me (thanks, Brexit).

aborsy
You mean if you change address to outside EU, you can’t keep your eu domain?

They tend to be cheap.

M2Ys4U
Well if you're an EU/EEA citizen it doesn't matter where your address is, but if you're relying on the residency requirement as a non-EU/EEA citizen it might.
skwee357
Thanks, it makes sense, but I somehow missed this requirement. Anyway, my company is registered in the EU.
BayesianDice
I (in the UK) used to have a small local restaurant which had a .eu domain. When Brexit was happening, I mentioned this issue to them, and they explained the relevant individual was an EU citizen so they were OK in the short term but they were migrating anyway. (And I see they are now on a .co.uk domain.)